Days 60-62: Siem Reap

Following Laos, it was off to Cambodia to see the magnificent temples of Angkor. Heather had visited them once before so she wasn't really all that excited for them, but we were so close already it was too hard for me to pass up this so-called 8th world wonder.

We flew in to Siem Reap, the city just adjacent to the major historical sites. We arrived rather early (which also meant we woke up really early) so we decided to hit the ground running. We quickly settled in to our abode, MotherHome Guesthouse (another TripAdvisor score), hired a tuk-tuk and headed to see the temples. The first day we opted to take the "long circuit," which would take us to see some of the minor sites that were a little further out and would save the big attractions for the following day. Even so, we hit a total of 6 temples, and the architecture of these "lesser" temples was stunning. I was amazed at the sheer enormity of these stone mammoths!

Preah Khan, our first stop for the day

Taking in the view at East Mebon

It was a hot and humid day in Cambodia so the viewing was rather taxing. The only relief we got was the wind on our tuk-tuk ride between the sites, which was usually short-lived. A sweet pineapple for each of us at 2 for $1 was also a nice treat. There was no shortage of hawkers though, and if anything could spoil the beauty of the temples it would be them. Understandably it's a way to make a living for some of the poor Cambodian families, but the constant assault of offers is painful. A polite "no, thank you" appears to mean "try harder" so in the end, I had to just resort to ignoring some of them. What makes it even more painful is that the majority of the hawkers are children, most under the age of ten. If there's any consolation, the children, given the right opportunities, could be very successful. They are driven, hard working, and brilliant as evident by them making sales in Chinese and English while speaking Cambodian to one another!

Back in town that night, we headed to the old market area, a popular tourist area. Our first stop- Miss Wong's! Rated highly on TripAdvisor, this place served up some delicious cocktails for happy hour and with a name like that, how could we resist? Dinner that night was Cambodian fare at Sugar Palm restaurant where I had my first taste of amok, a curry custard steamed in banana leaves giving it a souffle texture.

Miss and Mrs. Wong

fluffy fish amok

The next day, we decided to go all out on the temple viewing! We started it off with a sunrise viewing of the famous Angkor Wat. The only problem is that the sun rises at 6, which meant a wake up call at 5 am... I thought we were on vacation! We arrived to Angkor Wat with a throng of other tourists who wanted to see the same thing, but managed to find some decent enough photo-shooting space. However, the sunrise didn't deliver. There were too many low lying clouds in the horizon which obscured the sun and in the end, it was utterly anti-climactic. We did manage to get a coupled of OK shots of its silhouette before we went to explore the site in more detail.

Angkor Wat at first light

After Angkor Wat, we headed to Angkor Thom, a much larger temple area by size with Bayon as its centerpiece. Bayon was probably my favorite site. The intricate designs of the 216 stone sculpted faces glinting in the morning sun was fascinating. Sitting on the stone steps made an excellent spot to enjoy our boxed breakfasts.

Bayon's many faces etched into stone

We then headed to all the adjacent sites - terrace of the elephant king, Baphuon, terrace of the leper king, Ta Keo, and finally Ta Prohm, the temple made famous by the movie Tomb Raider. All were interesting and unique from one another, but after a full morning of viewing and the temperature and humidity rising, we had had enough.

The grand entrance to Baphuon

Intricate carvings at the terrace of the leper king

The incredible intertwining of trees and stone at Ta Prohm

The afternoon was spent lazily next to our pool (yes, this $20 hotel included a nice refreshing pool!). We found our way back to the Old Market area again that night. I bought some cheap polarized sunglasses at their night market which would come in handy in Bali. Feeling the need for a little pampering, we stopped in for some tasty Italian food at Il Forno. Afterward, we headed to a wine bar where they were having a very amateur drag show production of bad lip-synching and dancing. The highlight was a pudgy short ladyboy singing and dancing to Beyonce's "Single Ladies." It still puts a smile on my face when I think about it now.

All templed out, our final day in Siem Reap was spent quietly. We hit a wet market close by in search of roasted bugs but to no avail. We did manage to get some good photos and some fruit to munch on by the pool. It was a good day of rest before heading to the capital, Phnom Penh, the next day.

Man on moto carrying his wares

Child working fruit stand

Days 57-58: Vang Vieng

Another grueling bus ride was needed to get to our next destination. This time the minivan was spacious but our bus driver was not wasting any time. He careened through the hillside passes with tires squealing at times. I suffered throughout most of the 6 hour journey as my stomach wasn't completely settled from my previous illness. Turns out, all you need to heal a stomach bug is a little good old fashioned college partying....

If Laos is a backpacker's heaven, then Vang Vieng should be its capital. Nestled along the Nam Song river, the town has become a place where young backpackers (side note, we do not necessarily fit into this category anymore) go basically to party. Cheap guesthouses and hostels abound, and it's easy enough to get to and from the capital of Vientiane. We opted to "splurge" a little bit after having spent the last couple of weeks in fairly cheap accommodations to stay next to the river in a new hotel WITH a pool! It was exactly what both of us were looking for.

Our first full day in Vang Vieng, we lounged about poolside for the better part of the morning. We then headed to town for some of Vang Vieng's famous "tubing" on the river. Tubing has been put in quotes as during monsoon season, the river flows rather fast. You could float this particular section of river in less than an hour. So instead of tubing, most people just a take a tube and stop at raucous riverfront bars every few hundred feet.

We grabbed tubes, hopped on a tuk tuk, and drove along the river upstream, where we were let off and immediately loaded onto a barge that took us across the river to our first bar. We didn't even get wet! The bar at which we arrived was filled with people dancing to thumping dance beats (I loved it), co-eds playing beer pong and people guzzling drinks out of buckets. That's right, buckets. Buckets of varying combos of red bull, alcohol and other mixers. They were delicious.

A bucket with 3 straws just for me

We ran into some people we had met on our two previous bus rides and joined forces for the rest of the night. Our group created quite scene as we headed down the river in one linked mass of bobbing tubes. This was advantageous as we were an easy target whenever we wanted to stop at our next bar. Bar staff on land would hurl long ropes with a half-filled water bottles on the end to rope us in - and with surprising accuracy. Since the current was so swift, it took everyone's combined strength to help pull us in. We ended up having a blast with our new friends, jumping off rope swings, "surfing," and spray painting each other.

Spray painted "love" in Rastafarian colors

"surfing" on a wooden door in the swift current

Rope swing flip

At the end of our bar hopping, we floated down the remainder of the river. The setting was amazing with great rock pillars spiking out of the land adjacent to the river. What a shame that many tubers can't even appreciate the scenery as they're too drunk and/or they've made too many stops to be able to finish the float in time. It's a bit sad to see the Laos essence being lost in a tourist destination like this, though.

To cap off the night, we found the best rated restaurant in town - Whopping Burger, a burger joint owned by a Japanese chef! There's a reason why it's rated so well - the food is really really good, AND it's the perfect meal to have after a day of tubing on the river.

Days 55-57: Luang Prabang

We got on the bus to Luang Prabang tired, itchy, sore and satisfied with our 2 day jungle experience. We had heard that the town we eventually called "the LPB" was a picturesque French-influenced town along the Mekong and such a unique national treasure that the entire town has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so there was already plenty to look forward to.

After a muddy and winding 9 hour drive on a cramped minibus with 11 of our closest friends (apologies again to the 6'3" guy behind me into whom my foldaway chair kept collapsing, and many thanks to our driver for treating us to some amazingly awful Lao tunes on repeat), we arrived in Luang Prabang!

We then overcame a bold attempt at first tuk tuk price gouging, then borrowed cell phone price gouging (no I will not pay you $5 to make a 10 second phone call), and finally hotel confusion before finally arriving at our desired location just steps from the Mekong. After such a long and trying day, we felt that an indulgent drink at the swanky Apsara Hotel followed by dinner at the best restaurant in town (Tamarind) was in order.

Eggplant with plump green peppercorns

Sampling platter of Lao dishes with the ubiquitous sticky rice

Our first full day was spent taking in the town's sights by foot. Our first stop, which is now becoming a tradition of ours upon arriving in a new town, was to visit the local market. The rest of the day was mostly spent walking along the Mekong and visiting a number of ornately constructed and designed temples. Interestingly, the Lao people seem to have taken a liking to temple mosaics made with inlaid pieces of colored mirror - something I haven't seen in the rest of my Asian travels.

Eggplants at the market

Inlaid glass mosaic

That evening we enjoyed our second cooking class of the trip, hosted by Tamarind! The setting for the class was pretty unreal - an open air covered deck next to a river. Some things we learned:

• Sticky rice is a Lao staple. Steamed (unsticky) rice is not part of the local vocabulary. It is cooked by steam only (not in a rice cooker), in a bamboo basket over a charcoal grill and flipped elegantly by hand. To eat, hands must be used as a fork is ineffective.
  
• MSG is a legitimate ingredient in Lao cuisine, but our teacher gave us the option of leaving it out.
  
• Lao style fish sauce is fermented for a year and has an unappetizing opaque grey hue. Our teacher was sure to warn us to add the ingredient first, smell later.
  
• A mortar and pestle is required in any self-respecting Lao household.
  
• While almost identical in appearance, longan (previously my favorite fruit) is different from longkong (my new favorite, like a sweet grapefruit).
  

After cooking our meals individually from start to finish, we sat down to enjoy:

1. Eggplant jeow (dipping sauce)
   
2. Tomato jeow (dipping sauce)
   
3. Mok Pa - fish cooked in banana leaf
   
4. Lemongrass stuffed with chicken
   
5. Purple sticky rice with local fruits
   

All in all an incredible experience! It is no wonder the Tamarind cooking class is one of TripAdvisor's top 5 "to-dos" in Luang Prabang. (And at a fraction of the cost of our Vietnamese class!)

Our class instructor describing the ingredients we would use

Showing off our cute packets of fish wrapped in banana leaves

We then capped off the evening at Utopia, a surreal riverside bar. If you can dream it, they have it: creative drinks, thatched open air huts over the water, cushy floor mattresses for reclining, hookahs, board games, life-sized Jenga, lounge music and plenty more. Eventually we tore ourselves away to rest up for what would be a day of hard labor (OK, half day).

By hard labor I mean we farmed rice at an organic rice farm! Given that we went through the entire plant/harvest cycle of a rice farm in a few hours, we realize that it was mostly a hands-on academic exercise but it was fun nonetheless. We learned how to separate bad kernels from good, how to plow the field behind Susan the water buffalo (for an added dose of authenticity, she went #2 while I was plowing), how to plant seedlings in knee-high mud, and how to harvest. Never again will we look at rice the same way without appreciating what it had to go through to get to our table! Strangely no one on the hotel circuit seemed to know anything about this rice experience, so I'm glad we took matters into our own hands and called the farm ourselves.

Susan really loved her salt

Plowing the fields

Sorting out the bad rice from the good rice

We then rewarded our rice paddy efforts with a visit to Kuang Si Falls, an impressive waterfall with a series of swimming pools below. About 25 km from town, the waterfall is in a totally different climate! Despite some pretty heavy off-and-on rain, we plunged right in with the best of them - aided by a rope swing for added excitement.

me taking the plunge

Stan following suit

By then Stan's overdue GI issues finally presented themselves, but we still managed to enjoy a high class Lao meal before getting our feet nibbled by tiny fish and shopping at the night market. For the record, I am now the proud owner of 2 pairs of hippie pants! I hear they are all the rage in Sacramento.

Fish chowing down on our skin. It felt like hundreds of little fingers!

Our last day was spent rather lazily due to our nonstop adventures and Stan's sad stomach. We explored the National Museum (formerly the palace, home to a beautiful throne room of red walls with inlaid mirror mosaic) before I received two massages (one without and one with Stan). And why not? My muscles needed loosening before yet another long bus ride. Also, I need to take advantage of these $4/1 hour massages while they last...

Days 52-54: Luang Namtha

Heading away from the big cities of Laos, we flew to Luang Namtha to experience some of the Lao wilderness. Our flight took us over picturesque views with swathes of untouched bamboo forests, rubber trees, snaking rivers and sloping hillsides.

 

iPhone picture from the plane

No it's not raining. Apparently it is NOT cool to get a tan

From our perspective, Luang Namtha is a rather small town that most travelers use as a quick stopping point in their journey. In true backpacker form, we caught a tuk tuk into town and wandered around for a place to stay. I knew we had found our place when we saw the sign for ManyChan Guesthouse! And with a room for $6 a night... sign me up!

A good fit

Our next order of business was to figure out what kind of wilderness activity we would do. We shopped around and settled on a 2 day "multisport" trip consisting of a day of kayaking and a day of trekking that would leave the following morning. Unfortunately, since it was low season, no one else decided to join us (which would have lowered our cost a bit, but again, still relatively cheap).

We spent the rest of the day exploring the small town, and hiked up to see one of the wats (temples). We later hit up their much smaller night market for some rather nice street food - ynoodle soup, Laos-style papaya salad, and juicy whole roasted duck, which at $3 I'm still salivating over.

 

Prepping our papaya salad

The next day we started off with the rafting portion of our trip. The river was swollen given that it was peak monsoon season. Our embarking point had even flooded over the banks in some areas. Once adrift though, the views were gorgeous. More bamboo trees all around us jand native villages along the way. We stopped at a village of Lantan people and watched them spin wool and use indigo to dye clothes in the traditional way.

Cheerful villager

 

The rafting itself was easy enough.... well for 99% of it. In fact, it was more of a float then anything else. There were 2 rapids in total that were actually quite small. When we hit the last set of rapids, I suspect our guide sensed that I wanted some "action" as he directed our raft to a trough with a steep lip. Our raft dove into the wave, but unfortunately got stuck there. It teetered for a few seconds until it felt like the entire thing was going to flip like a pancake. Unable to hold on due to the steep angle of the raft, Heather and I got tossed into the muddy river! I managed to stay with the raft and clamber back in but it was a few harrowing minutes until we got Heather and all the belongings back in. Turns out Heather was held under for a few seconds (swallowing a fair amount of nasty water) but her life jacket popped her back up. It was scary at the time but fun thinking back on it now!

Our almost trusty raft

That night we stayed in a Khmu village right off the riverbank. The village has one running water tap and electricity (although it was out the night we stayed due to fallen wires from one of the seasonal mudslides). They still live in traditional rattan huts raised on stilts and almost everyone spends their day doing backbreaking work in the rice fields. The younger kids are generally exempt and are quite playful. We had a group of kids hovering around our hut, one of whom had fashioned himself some mini stilts! That evening, we had dinner by flashlight with the chief of the village. Our guide served as a translator as we asked the chief about his duties and his villagers' interesting daily life.

After a surprisingly restful night's sleep despite sleeping on wood floors and with a confused rooster cockadoodle-dooing throughout the night, Heather woke up with round 2 of near-dysentery, just in time for us to head across the river to the Nam Ha NPA (national protected area) to begin our jungle hike. Within minutes, we were dripping with sweat as we climbed in the heat and humidity straight up the hill. After 20 minutes, we agreed we had had enough as the ground was a mud field and mosquitoes swarmed around us if we stopped. Yet we plodded on and did a 5 hour hell-loop. We were glad to have stuck it out, but it sucked at the time. The highlight of the hike was our lunch in the middle of the jungle. Our guide, Sai, foraged for ingredients from the jungle to make an surprisingly tasty stew with minimal resources. He snagged heart of palm (rattan) and banana flower and threw it in with some other ingredients - and then cooked it all in a bamboo stalk! He even had us fashion spoons out of banana leaves. A nearly 100% "green" lunch with almost no waste.

Fungus on tree

Exhibiting machete skills to peel the rattan stem to get the heart of palm

Peering down into our bamboo cooking vessel with our soup ingredients

Lunch is served

After our delicious meal, we eventually emerged from the jungle caked in mud (we both slipped and fell while descending on the slick paths) with tons of mosquito bites... then when we got to showering and discovered- leeches! Heather had 4 on her, while I had 2!

2 leeches! They bleed a bit after removal

We headed back to town afterwards and got some much needed rest. We even splurged to stay at the nicest joint in town, forking over a total of $7! The hot shower alone was worth it.

Rice paddy shot from a moving car

Day 51: Vientiane

Tsk tsk tsk. We've been bad about posting as of late, but I think we have a little bit of an excuse. Laos has been action packed, traveling by buses a lot, and wireless at times has been hard to come by. A GI bug finally caught up to me so that lay me down for a bit as well. Now we are set to blog about the highlights from our last week!

To get to Laos, we flew into Vientiane, the capital city and the country's major hub for those arriving by air. Despite being the capital, the city was for the most part calm without skyscrapers or highrises. Laos is after all still one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia, which would become more apparent as traveled further away from the cities. We quickly found our hotel and then headed down to the Mekong riverfront to wander the aisles of the vast night market. All sorts of items were being hawked - woven silks, Angry Bird t-shirts, crepes with psychedelic colored cream cheese - but we weren't very much in the mood for shopping just then.

So we hustled over to one of the best reviewed restaurants in town, Makphet, for some Laos cuisine. The restaurant is fancy and pricey by Laos standards (actually cheaper than a meal in the States), but the proceeds go toward supporting their cause: helping disadvantaged street children in Laos, including all of our servers and chefs-in-training. After a short wait for a table (due to its popularity), we got down to business and enjoyed some pretty tasty and high-end Laotian food. A good start to our tour of the country!

Pork and pumpkin stir fry

Coconut curry with pork and noodles

Fruity drink in SE Asia? Why not

The next morning, after a quick breakfast, it was off to the airport for our short flight to Luang Namtha in the northwest portion of the country.

Heading to the airport. Tuk tuk is the preferred method of travel in Laos

 

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Days 48-51: Hanoi

We finally made it to my favorite city in Vietnam, the capital of Hanoi. Crowded, historical, vibrant, bustling and delicious in every way.

Unfortunately the weather was some of the hottest we have experienced on the trip (similar to Bangladesh), and since most activities were outside and/or minimally air conditioned, there was little relief.

We stayed at Chez Linh Linh, yet another AirBnB gem. The place was unfortunately on the outskirts of town rather than in Old Town, but also fortunately from a travel planning perspective (more on that later). It was owned by a lovely Vietnamese family that spoke English, French and Italian, and I even got the chance to practice my French with several French families who were also staying over! (With Vietnamese culture being so influenced by French colonialism - coffee, pastries, banh mi - it's no wonder that this is now a popular destination for Frenchies.)

Our first night we went out in search of Hanoi's famous cha ca, a culinary delight that I first tasted during my visit in 2008. Stan and I have tried to recreate cha ca many times at home and it has become one of our favorite exotic recipes. After some trial and error (the original Cha Ca La Vong was closed for the evening), we finally ended up at Cha Ca La Vong 2, the diviest of dives clear on the other side of town. Outdoor seating, 100% local patrons, warm bottles of beer accompanied by ice from who knows where... We took one look and thought "this is the place!" Within minutes, we were convinced to order the most expensive fish on the menu, but it was well worth it for the juicy sea bass-like fish that we received. Sautéed with dill and green onion, it was almost like I remember, only much less dilly and much more selection (Cha Ca La Vong only serves one dish with one type of fish). I wonder if this much variation in such a famous dish is to be expected. Somehow, Stan claims to prefer my version. However, we were glad to have been able to try a new place and considered the outing to be a success.

A long search but finally got our cha ca

Our first full day was spent wandering the city. The first order of business was obviously to chow down on some typical Hanoi-style pho bo (beef noodle soup) on a recommendation from our hosts. Solid as always, and surprisingly great meat (always a potential dealbreaker for me).

We then hopped on a couple of motos and tried unsuccessfully to find a little-known bunker that was secretly used as the central command center for Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. Eventually we gave up and headed to the Temple of Literature, a Chinese-influenced temple for scholars which I remembered to be a serene respite from city life. It still serves that purpose, but it was definitely teeming with more tourists than I remember... Bad for us but great for Vietnam's booming tourism industry.

At the Temple of Literature

Lunch was bun cha, another Hanoi favorite involving ground pork patties in a sweet fish sauce broth, fresh herbs and rice noodles. Yum!

Bun cha in the front of someone's living room

It should be noted that we are now embracing our growing waistlines. All in the name of collecting life experiences!

At this point we headed back to our homestay for some much-needed A/C and rest before setting back out for one of our highlights: a cooking class! Our class of 6 first explored a wet market (fresh food), where we saw fresh tofu being made, frogs, crickets, dog blood sausage and unusual produce that none of us had seen before. It was a fantastic crash course in local cuisine and we were able to ask our teacher how different foods are prepared. After walking around with our jaws agape, we headed back with a bit of soybean milk and fertilized duck egg for all to try (in addition to the recipes on our formal "syllabus")!

Tofu maker

Wet market tour

We made the following items, almost completely from start to finish:

• Banana flower salad
• Caramel pork
• Seafood spring rolls
• Peanut & Black Sesame Che (Vietnamese dessert soup)

All were incredibly tasty and surprisingly easy (once you have all the ingredients and proper slicing tools). We are now more motivated than ever to make use of our newly-acquired cookbook!

Our teacher, showing us how to properly prepare the banana flower

Master chef at work

And by the way, the soybean milk was fantastic and the duck embryo was surprisingly tasty, despite it being visually horrifying.

It actually comes as an egg, but this is for shock value

Pounding sesame seeds and peanuts for dessert

Day 2 started with an awesome bike tour led by Lâm, our homestay owner. His family has lived in Hanoi for 300 years and he grew up in a "village" (what we would call a neighborhood) within city limits, so he knows what he's talking about. We used our 18-speeds to zoom through back alleys crowded with moto commuters, produce markets and early morning shoppers before finally easing onto the main roads, where we shared the road with just about everyone! Strangely it was more comforting to be on a bike in a crowded street going the same speed and direction as everyone else rather than to be a pedestrian trying to inch his/her way across the road.

Bike tour with remnants of B-52 bomber in background

In between torrential rain bursts we made a couple of key stops. First we ate banh cuon for breakfast at Lâm's favorite childhood stand - seriously some of the most incredible street food we had. Homemade rice paper stuffed with a magical blend of ground pork and wood ear mushrooms. We then stopped at a lakeside coffeeshop where we sat on tiny stools on the sidewalk like locals. Apparently not a stretch, as everyone in Vietnam seems to think we look Vietnamese - even me! One final stop at the mysterious secret bunker that we missed on our prior excursion and we headed back home to regroup.

Seriously local banh cuon - this lady has been making the same dish for 20 years

Lunch was bun oc, snail noodle soup. Neither of us were huge fans, probably because of the room-temperature vinegary broth, but also for me there was a bit of slime factor... Still worth trying to see what all the fuss is about!

Most of the rest of the day was spent wandering the city, particularly the Old Town, where we drank traditional raw egg coffee, followed by awesome $10 massages by professionally trained therapists at a school for acupuncture (both fantastic Lâm recommendations). Fortunately we were holed up in a cafe when the first remnants of Typhoon Kai-Tak came through. It was quite a sight to see Hoan Kiem Lake flood in a matter of minutes!

Coffee with egg. Sounds questionable but actually delicious. The egg made it silky smooth and creamy like a latté without milk. Good option for the lactose intolerant!

The typhoon killed 40 people in Vietnam, but this flooded lake was no match for traffic

Unfortunately the tropical storm would mean our much-anticipated overnight boat trip to Halong Bay would be cancelled... Fortunately Thuy, the wife at our homestay, also works as a travel agent. She had made our boat reservations, as well as booked or flight to Laos, and she was able to get a refund on the cruise and switch us to an earlier flight to Laos at an extra cost of just $10. How refreshing to be able to travel without the hassle of exorbitant airline fees! Then, as a bonus consolation prize for not doing our cruise, we were invited to help make and then eat homemade spring rolls - hands down the best we ate in Vietnam.

Spring rolls, family style

So it looks like we'll be coming back to Vietnam another time to check Halong Bay off the list. Like we needed any other reason after our incredible culinary tour!

Sunset on West Lake